4 weeks vs 1 year? Really?

Building it themselves would be out of reach – we’re talking hundreds of thousands of $ and a year of time. With frevvo, it’s up and running in just a few weeks.

Complex forms & workflows are really hard to program by hand

It started out as a casual conversation at lunch. But, I was so surprised at the answers I couldn’t believe my ears. Check out the little Q&A below with Courtney Bernard, one of our Customer Success whizzes.

FB (Frevvo Blog): What do you do at frevvo?
CB (Courtney Bernard): I wear a few hats in the Customer Success area. Obviously, some client services but I also do some training & customer support. I also do some of the voice overs for frevvo’s videos.

FB: This recent project, what’s it all about?
CB: It’s a customer in real estate (Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty). They sell real estate. But, before selling any property, it must first be listed – an MLS listing. That means filling out tons of paperwork – anyone who’s sold a house is probably familiar with this. You have to fill out literally dozens of forms, sign in a bunch of places, write in the same info over and over again, correct mistakes etc. It’s painful.

For our customer, obviously, speeding up the listing process is a good thing. They wanted to turn everything into an electronic form/workflow. No more mistakes, duplicate typing or signing, save tons of time.

FB: Ok, so what’d you do?
CB: We did it for them.

FB: Just like that?
CB: Well, no. This is an MLS listing. It’s huge. I’d guess there were 350 maybe 400 fields at least. And, it’s really complex. Many fields depend on others. For example, some fields are part of one type of listing others are not. Choose an option in one field and a bunch of other fields may be affected. We needed to generate a nicely formatted PDF. And, the entire form must work on a mobile device (usually a tablet) since associates are typically out in the field. So, it wasn’t easy to do.

FB: Put that in a bit of context for us. If I wanted to hire someone to build this, how long would it take?
CB: Well, it’s a guess since I haven’t estimated it but I’d say easily 4-6 man-months for development and about the same for QA. Then there’s PDF generation and mobile. Do you really want it to look good on a tablet? That takes work and lots of time. So, somewhere between 9 to 15 months is probably a good bet. Of course, that’s if it works at all. The complexity is high so there’s a definite risk that it’ll fail.

[Spoiler: This is the part where I couldn’t believe my ears.]
FB: How long did it take you?
CB: Well, they did some of the testing work. It took us about 80 hours (2 weeks) in total. Assuming they spent about as long, we’re talking about 4-6 weeks total.

FB: WHAT? 4 weeks vs 1 year? Seriously?
CB: Yes seriously. I mean the 4-6 weeks of work was spread out over 4 months (holidays, other projects, delays etc) so 4-6 weeks is the actual time we spent.

FB: How the heck is that even possible?
CB: I know. It’s crazy. frevvo is incredibly good at making these large, complex business forms usable. If you had a simple 1-page form with 10 fields, the difference wouldn’t be so drastic. But, as complexity rises, the # of fields increase, dynamic behavior, business rules, PDF, mobile etc. come into play, the cost of building rises dramatically. That’s where frevvo really shines. It’s amazing how easy it is.

FB: Jameson’s must have been pleased?
CB: Without question. They’re reasonably big but not huge. Building it themselves would be out of reach – we’re talking 100s of thousands of $ and a year of time. frevvo puts the benefits of this kind of automation in the hands of companies like Jameson Sotheby’s who realistically wouldn’t have access to it otherwise. That’s huge!

FB: And, what else do you do when you’re not helping customers succeed?
CB: Read, listen to podcasts, ride horses, go hiking, play with my son, watch Downton Abbey and root for my beloved New England Patriots.

There you have it folks! A single form that would have likely cost $100s of K completed in a matter of weeks and far far lower cost with frevvo. And that doesn’t even take into account the productivity benefits that will accrue for years to come.